Thursday, June 9, 2016

Ken Nnamani And Co’s Beggarly Villa Trip

By Ochereome Nnanna

I would not
have commented on the recent appearance by a group of political adventurers in
Aso Villa if not for the fact that they were described as“Igbo leaders”in some sections of the media. If they
had simply gone as All Progressives Congress (APC) members from the South East
visiting the President and leader of their party for whatever purposes, it
would have passed as a non-event (though I have not seen APC leaders from other
geopolitical zones going similarly cap-in-hand for special attention of
President Muhammadu Buhari).

They called their
gathering South East Group for Change (SEGC), probably a name they coined just
for the Aso Rock trip, as nothing of such had been heard before now. Led by Mr.
Ken Nnamani, a former Senate President, some of the known names included Mr.
Osita Izunaso, a former one-term senator; Mr. Ernest Ndukwe, a two-term
Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Mr.
Chris Akomas, a former Deputy Governor of Abia State and Chief George Moghalu.

Apart from Moghalu,
the rest were in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) when the going was good.
They owed the high public offices attached to their names to the PDP, and now
that the APC has become the new party with the“knife and yam”,they have trooped over there to reap
where they did not sow. They are political opportunists, and it shocks many of
Nnamani’s former admirers that he has degenerated to this level after once
seeming a strong presidential possibility from Igboland.

Of this lot, only
Moghalu is a genuine, thoroughbred APC leader. From 1999, Moghalu has been in
the movement that eventually transmogrified into the APC – from the All
People’s Party (APP) to the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP) to the Action
Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to the APC. He is a true party man; a genuine
politician who stuck with the former opposition party through sun, rain, storms
and high winds until it finally became the ruling party.

Buhari told us that
the reason he violated the constitutional principle of federal character in the
appointment of his inner government, was that he distributed positions to those
who toiled and suffered with him over the years as a reward for their loyalty.
I wonder how Moghalu could not qualify for appointment since he had been one of
Buhari’s faithful point men in the South East since 2003 when he first ran for
president. He was in that movement long before Dr. Chris Ngige decamped from
the PDP. Even though no communiqué or media statement was issued after that
visit (Buhari, knowing them for the opportunists they were, probably had
nothing tangible to tell them), I read a most annoying analysis credited to an
unnamed member of the group.

This fellow
fraudulently claimed that Buhari emerged president last year because“some people worked”to ensure that former President
Goodluck Jonathan could not get the quantum of votes he got in the South East
which assisted him in winning in 2011. Why did those unnamed Buhari miracle
workers fail to grab 25 per cent votes for him in any of the five South East
States? The truth was that the Igbos were even more determined than they were
in 2011 to see Jonathan returned for a second term, but Professor Attahiru
Jega’s Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs) and his Card Reader machines were
deployed to cut the quantum of votes that could have gone in the former
president’s favour in the South East and South-South.

There was mass
failure of card readers in the two zones, though it was a great success in theLagosarea. But in the North nobody bothered
with them. It was “incident forms”/manual all the way, coupled with under-aged
voters. Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso has openly and without shame boasted about it.
Majority of Igbos never worked for Buhari’s victory, but the auguries went in
favour of Buhari, which is democracy in action. They are not asking for the
lion’s share of the spoils of APC victory because they are a minority in the
ruling party. All they are asking for is their constitutional rights spelt out
in the federal character principle, which is the irreducible minimum of equity.

Majority of Igbos
are comfortable being with their South-South neighbours politically rather than
the old situation of the two sides fighting each other for the North’s crumbs.
They have no grudges against Buhari and his party. Like other Nigerians, they
expect the President to carry everyone along since political contestations are
over. If the South East and South-South decide to work together with Buhari and
his APC, it must be based on clearly identifiable indicators of good governance
and willingness to give every Nigerian group a sense of belonging. It cannot be
under the terms and conditions under which the so-called SEDC members are
masquerading with the name of Igbo people and throwing themselves at a leader
who has no use for them.

What irked people
the most was that this laughable visit took place against the background of a
year in which two Igbo girls were forcibly converted to Islam and married off
without their parents’ blessings in the North. Buhari sent Boko Haram prisoners
to a minimum security prison in Ekwulobia, Anambra. Also, Fulani herdsmen have
been ravaging communities in the South East and other areas and for nearly one
year, and Buhari has refused to say or do anything about it.

Instead he mobilised the
Nigerian Army (instead of the Police) to kill hundreds of unarmed protesting
Igbo youth (the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB). And under his one year in
office, two Igbos have been lynched in the North for trumped up charges of
“blasphemy”. Under this hostile atmosphere, all that Nnamani and his fellow PDP
turncoats could think of was to go to President Buhari, to ask for what?